Thomas Cook is set to be relaunched by its Chinese owner, who plans to use the 178-year-old British tour operator’s brand on a travel platform targeting European customers, Bloomberg News reported. Fosun Tourism Group, the Shanghai-based company that bought Thomas Cook’s trademark following its dramatic collapse in September, will debut the platform in the first half of next year.
Resources Per Country
- Albania
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Guernsey
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Isle of Man
- Italy
- Jersey
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malta
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- San Marino
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Vatican City
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Administrators of a failed care home and hospitality group are trying to locate £50 million raised from private investors which is allegedly missing, the Times reported. Insolvency practitioners from two firms, Duff & Phelps and Quantuma, said that they were facing a “huge job” to locate and recover funds raised by Carlauren Group. Carlauren, which is based in Yeovil, and related companies have about 260 staff. It was established in 2015 and ran care homes, hotels and other businesses.
Germany will give financial assistance to customers hit by the insolvency of Thomas Cook because the tour operator’s insurance cover has proved insufficient, Reuters reported today. “Damages that are not compensated by other parties will be settled by the federal government,” it said in a statement, confirming a report by broadcaster ARD. Insurer Zurich’s liability is capped at 110 million euros ($121 million) but it has already registered claims worth 250 million and experts estimate total claims will reach 300 million to 500 million euros, ARD said.
A Switzerland-based subsidiary of HSBC Holdings PLC on Tuesday admitted helping Americans evade taxes over a decade and agreed to pay $192 million to settle criminal charges, the Wall Street Journal reported. The penalty includes $60 million that represents the value of unpaid taxes resulting from HSBC Private Bank’s role in the conspiracy, U.S. authorities said. The total fine also includes $71.8 million in revenue that must be forfeited, stemming from fees earned from handling the undeclared accounts, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
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Debt ratings agency Moody’s has lowered its outlook on the Irish banking system to stable from positive as lenders’ profits are set to decline amid ongoing ultra-low central bank interest rates, the Irish Times reported. While Irish lenders’ levels of non-performing loans (NPLs) have come down significantly in recent years, they remain “sizeable”, it said.
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France’s markets watchdog AMF said on Tuesday it had fined U.S bank Morgan Stanley 20 million euros ($22 million) for manipulation of sovereign bonds, Reuters reported. AMF said the fine related to manipulating the price of 14 French government bonds (OAT) and 8 Belgian bonds (OLO) on June 16, 2015, and also of an OAT futures contract. AMF had noted a large sale of government bonds on June 16, 2015 disrupted the French MTS Global Market bond trading system, causing transactions to be suspended for four minutes and liquidity levels to drop for about an hour.
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Cboe Global Markets said today that it would take full control of EuroCCP, Europe’s largest clearing house for stock trades, to bolster its post-Brexit base in Amsterdam and diversify into derivatives, Reuters reported. It is the latest deal in a rapidly consolidating market where the Swiss Exchange has bid for its Madrid counterpart and the London Stock Exchange (LSE.L) is buying financial market data company Refinitiv. Cboe, the biggest pan-European share trading platform, already owns 20 percent of EuroCCP.
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About 47,000 firms across the UK financial sector will be subject to tough accountability rules designed to clean up the City of London’s reputation after a string of scandals, the Irish Times reported. The Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR), which holds financial companies’ top brass liable for failings on their watch, is being extended to the rest of the sector, three years after its initial rollout for banks and insurers.
The International Monetary Fund gave tentative approval to a $5.5 billion lending program for Ukraine, after months of prodding Ukraine’s new president to clean up corruption and straighten out the banking sector, the Wall Street Journal reported. A new lending program for Ukraine would be a signal for investors who have worried about Ukraine’s direction under its new president, a former television actor with scant political experience who was elected in April on an anticorruption platform.
A stalemate between the U.S. and other members of the World Trade Organization, including the European Union and China, stands to cripple the organization’s top court, threatening the global body’s survival, the Wall Street Journal reported. On Wednesday the court, called the Appellate Body, will no longer have enough judges to rule on big trade disputes between countries. At stake are international rules negotiated over five decades by the U.S. and Europe to boost global trade.
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